State of Engagement 2026 Report |
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When Transparity was founded a little over a decade ago, it started with just two people and a very clear mission: to build a cloud-based technology business focused exclusively on the Microsoft stack, while putting both customers and people at the very heart of the organisation.
Fast forward to today, and Transparity has scaled into an organisation with a turnover of around £100 million. Over recent years, its workforce has experienced rapid expansion, growing from 82 employees in 2021 to over 370 today. Accommodating that level of growth - alongside five strategic acquisitions and a complete pivot to remote working - could easily dilute a company’s culture. Yet, Transparity has maintained its high-engagement environment, achieving Best Companies 3-Star Accreditation.
"I think in all these things in an organisation, the fundamental DNA is important", explains Neil Tune, Chief People and Culture Officer at Transparity. "If you get those fundamentals right upfront - this is what we want to be as an organisation, this is what's important to us - that helps enormously. Our biggest challenge has been what we call 'growth as usual'. It’s about ensuring we attract the right talent, engage that talent and keep the business fit for purpose."
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Transparity transitioned to remote working. When evaluating their future workplace strategy through employee feedback, one clear finding changed everything.
"There was one question in our survey: 'Do you feel trusted to do your job from home?' Every single person said yes", says Neil. "Having had years of experience in HR, that was a big lightbulb moment. We embraced this new way of working and branded it Winning from Anywhere."
Unlike rigid hybrid models that mandate set days in the office, Transparity’s approach is trust-based and outcome-focused. The business opened a modern hub in Central London - located in the same building as Microsoft - designed specifically for collaboration, team meetings and customer events rather than daily desk work.
"Winning from Anywhere is a set of principles", Neil shares. "It's about winning at an individual level through work-life balance and no unnecessary commutes. It’s about winning as a team by showing up for each other, and winning for customers by delivering great outcomes."
Maintaining high engagement across a remote workforce requires intentional structure and frequent touchpoints. Transparity has built a steady cadence of rituals that foster connection and appreciation:
High performance and engagement go hand in hand with career progression. Transparity places strong emphasis on personal growth, allocating 12 dedicated Growth Days per year for every employee to invest in technical certifications, Microsoft qualifications or broader skills training.
The business also embraces "squiggly careers", encouraging lateral moves that broaden an employee's skill set across different departments. In a single year, the organisation facilitated around 45 internal career moves.
"If you move somebody into a new role and backfill behind them, you might have four or five people feeling the positive impact of career growth", notes Neil. "We also carry out ‘strengths assessments’ during probation to help people understand their innate talents and how they can best contribute."
This focus on internal mobility and structured learning has helped push Transparity’s Personal Growth scores 5% above the sector average.
For Transparity, the data from Best Companies isn't just an annual score, it acts as an essential management tool.
"It’s my version of what finance would call management accounts", explains Neil Tune. "It’s my way of reading the business, getting a handle on reality and serving as a lead indicator for where we need to focus."
Scaling rapidly through five strategic acquisitions presents a unique culture challenge: bringing distinct teams and legacies under one roof without fracturing the core company identity. Rather than leaving integration to chance or relying on subjective feedback, Transparity uses the BestCompanies survey as a structured health check post-acquisition.
"When you acquire businesses, you want to know how those teams are feeling and how well they are blending into the culture", explains Neil. "Using the survey data gives us an honest, unfiltered pulse on how integrated people actually feel so we can support them effectively."
By analysing the survey data from newly acquired teams, the leadership team gains a clear baseline of employee sentiment, cultural alignment and pain points. This enables them to address integration friction early, reassure incoming talent, and actively weave new employees into Transparity's culture, ensuring every acquisition strengthens, rather than dilutes, their 3-Star engagement standard.
In a fully remote environment, a company's culture is experienced most directly through line managers. Transparity recognises that maintaining high engagement across a distributed workforce requires equipping people leaders with actionable insights to support, mentor and guide their individual teams effectively.
"Line managers are the engine room of engagement", Neil highlights. "By putting tools like Elevate into their hands, we’re not just managing engagement at an executive level, we're empowering managers to take ownership of their own team's environment and continuous improvement."
To achieve this, Transparity leverages Best Companies Elevate, putting data directly into the hands of managers. The platform provides line managers with tailored, real-time analytics for their specific teams, allowing them to pinpoint localised strengths and identify areas for improvement. By shifting engagement from a top-down HR initiative to a daily managerial practice, Transparity ensures that trust, clear communication and personal development remain consistent across every pocket of the business.
Ultimately, this ongoing focus on engagement and culture continues to deliver clear results for the business both inside and out.
"External validation through accreditation reassures talent that we're doing things right, while internally it confirms that this is the right place to be", Neil concludes. "It gives us real data, valuable benchmarking and the confidence to keep growing without losing our culture."
Neil Tune is an experienced People Professional and Executive Coach with an extensive, commercially focused HR career operating at the board and executive level, including roles as Chief People & Culture Officer and Group HR Director. Holding an MA in HR and an MSc in Coaching & Behaviour Change from Henley Business School, Neil brings a wealth of generalist HR expertise and deep coaching experience. He is passionate about helping individuals achieve their true potential, embedding purpose into the workplace and building high-performing, winning organisational cultures.